Fifteen

At the shop, Jordan is waiting for me—that’s all he’s doing—sitting in my chair behind the cash register, feet kicked up, my sticker and a closed laptop the only things on the counter.

“I like your art,” he says when I push through the Dutch door.

“Thanks,” I say, but my voice is cool. My loyalties are clear.

“I want to use some of it for the shop,” he says. “I think it would be cool to display one of your sculptures in the shop, and some of your images would make cool decals. For the boards.”

I don’t know what to say to this, how to react, but immediately I suspect ulterior motives. It can’t be a coincidence that he suddenly is looking for new images for the shop just a few days after the whole thing went down with our moms.

So I shrug and indicate with a lift of my chin that he should get out of my seat.

He ignores me and flips open the laptop and types something.

“Do you mind?” I say.

“I think your stuff could really appeal to the locals,” he goes on. “You know, local board shop, local artist …”

“You really want to get back with my mom, huh?”

Jordan looks up. His expression is unreadable. “Not everything’s about sex, Seph.”

I feel like he’s trying to chasten me, and I don’t buy it. Everything is about sex.

Then he angles the laptop so that I can see the screen. At first it doesn’t make sense. It’s Joaquin’s page, but Jordan is logged into it. And there are Joaquin’s terrible poems and links to the images I’ve uploaded of my stuff—my wolves, my handless maiden, my Sleeping Beauty, and my mermaids.

“You?”

He nods, looking kind of embarrassed. “I like your art,” he says again. “I’m a fan.”

It’s one of those moments when the things you thought you knew lose focus and come back together in a different order, with new meaning. It’s not the first time I’ve experienced this particular sensation, and I still don’t like it.

“Have you been fucking with me?”

He shakes his head, earnestly. “No way. I found your stuff online, and I was just trying to … encourage you. But this new thing”—he taps the sticker—“I think it’s really salable.”

I remember the way he stared at it, how he seemed surprised to see it there.

“This town is a fucking fishbowl,” I mutter. “And no one is who you think they are.” I look at Jordan again. “Why Joaquin?”

He shrugs, all little boy now. “Is that how you pronounce it? Sounds even cooler that way.”

I can’t help myself. I laugh.

He grins too, and I have to admit that it’s nice to see his smile again.

“Your newest poem is about my mom.” It’s not a question.

He nods.

“And you shaped it like a diamond?”

He shakes his head. “It was supposed to be a surfboard.”

I stop myself from saying what I’m thinking—lame—but I literally have to bite my lip.

So here we are, still Seph and Jordan, but now we’re this other thing too, these other people—me, the artist, and Jordan too is more than I thought he was. He’s Jordan; he’s Joaquin. He’s a shaper of boards, a fan of my art, a lover of my mother. And a shitty poet too.

“What do you say? Wanna make some boards with me?”

It’s one thing to slap my stickers around town. It would be another to see my image on his boards—and to sell the boards, for money. It kind of scares me, this idea, but it thrills me too.

Still, I have to ask, again, “Are you sure this isn’t about my mom?”

He sighs. “Seph, I fucked up with your mom. And I need to grow a fucking set of balls with mine. But this … ”—he taps on the sticker—“is something else. It’s your own thing. Nothing to do with Rebecca. How about it?”

His laptop has Photoshop, and I have my memory stick in my backpack. We open the image, and I watch as he reverses it so that it won’t be backward when we apply it to the board. Then he presses Print, and I hear the whirring sound of the printer. There it is—my sticker, in reverse, freshly copied onto decal paper. We wait about fifteen minutes while it dries.

Venice Beach smiles on us, and no one comes into the shop.

“Okay, it’s ready.” Jordan cuts the decal free from the rest of the paper. We go together into the back room. The board he was working on yesterday is still on the table, and he measures the tip from side to side and positions the decal where he thinks it should be.

“Okay?” he asks.

I nod.

He presses it facedown onto the surfboard, a few inches under the board’s tip, and measures again before he takes a spoon and rubs it, in smooth, firm strokes, to transfer the image. Then, carefully, he pulls back the paper.

There it is—my shadow image, permanently affixed to a Riley Wilson original. The whole process reminds me of those temporary tattoos I used to get from junk machines at the pizza parlor, the kind you have to get wet and then press against your skin for thirty seconds.

“I’ll glass the board,” Jordan says. “And then we’ll see if anyone wants to buy the thing.”

***

The next day is our summer school “midterm.” I fail it, of course, miserably. Crandall runs the Scantrons during our fifteen-minute break and hands them back to us before the end of class. There’s mine, with a big red F and the words “See me after class.”

“Well, you’re not doing real hot in here, little lady.” He’s been flipping through his grade book. I see my name next to a list of zeros and Fs.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve been a little preoccupied.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

He looks up at me, and for a second I consider the possibility that his looks might be deceiving, that he might be more than a third-rate teacher on a first-rate power trip. But then his gaze slips—just for a second—to my chest.

I say nothing.

“Do you have a tutor? Can you afford one?”

I shake my head slowly. I have a feeling I know where this is going.

“I could help you out,” he said. “Maybe you could still pass.”

Yes. Service with a smile.

Maybe I’m wrong. It’s possible that he’s just a dedicated teacher who wants to help a flailing student. I suppose he might have my best interests at heart. I think about it—about taking him up on his offer, about letting him help me out.

“You know,” he says, “I went to school with your mom.”

I push back my chair. I stand. And then I speak. “Fuck you, Crandall.”

I’m to the door before he finds his words, and when he does, I let them blur into sounds as I thrust through the doo rway and out into the blinding midday sun.